Hi Friends,

I decided to change things a bit tonight and test another "new to me" stove, this time it's an Optimus 8R Hunter that I bought off e-Bay in March.

I was working near one of my favorite campsites beside a small lake trout lake, so I stopped there for supper.

Here is the set-up, I found a small shed moose antler earlier in the day so I used it and some flat rocks as a partial windscreen.



This stove is very similar in burner design to the Svea 123R that I have been using for the past 2 days, but I found it much harder to heat-prime it to generate pressure in the tank (used Coghlin's priming paste). I have a small Midi pressure pump for the 8R and should have brought it along to speed-up this step.

Supper was boil-in-a-bag Cheese/Beef Tortillini, it wasn't bad.

I then put 500ml (about 2 cups) of water on the stove in a covered pot, to make a hot drink. Granted my windscreen was not the best, but in this realistic test it took 7 minutes for the water to come to a rolling boil, that seems a little long by today's high-tech stove standards. The stove is also very noisy when burning, sounds like a little helicopter!

I am having fun doing these field stove/meal tests, I think the next one will be propane fueled.

Later,

Mike

I almost bought one of those stoves many years ago, but ended up with a MSR XGK instead. If yours shounds like a copter, my XGK would be the space shuttle lifting off. But it worked every time, no matter waht the weather, and could boil water fast.

Keep having fun, and keep us informed of your field tests...